Football gag
The football gag is a joke that featured many times in Charles M. Schulz's comic strip, Peanuts. There have been several variations on the joke over the years. The football gag has also been included in some Peanuts animated television specials. The characters involved in the gag are Charlie Brown and Lucy van Pelt. Lucy tells Charlie Brown that she will hold a football while he kicks it. Charlie Brown usually refuses to kick it at first, not trusting Lucy. Lucy then says something to persuade Charlie Brown to trust her. Charlie Brown runs up to kick the ball, Lucy removes the ball and Charlie Brown flies into the air, before falling down and hurting himself. The gag usually ends with Lucy pointing out to Charlie Brown that he should not have trusted her. The first appearance of the gag is in the strip from November 14, 1951. in that strip Violet, not Lucy, is the one holding the ball and she only pulls it away beause she is afraid that Charlie Brown will kick her hand. Lucy was first shown playing the prank on Charlie Brown on November 16, 1952. Almost every year afterwards for the remainder of the strip's run, in the early autumn, Lucy would continue to fool the boy. One exeption is the strip from October 24, 1999, in which Lucy asks Rerun to play the trick instead. It is not revealed whether or not Rerun does what Lucy asked him to do. Charlie Brown comes close to kicking the football, in a 1979 storyline that begins when he is ill in hospital. Lucy promises she will never pull the football away again, if he gets better. She does not realize that Charlie Brown will find out about her promise, but when he does, Lucy realizes she has no other choice but to let Charlie Brown kick it. Lucy keep her promise not to pull the football away that year, but Charlie Brown misses the ball and kicks her hand. Charlie Brown is depicted as kicking the ball in the special, ''It's Magic, Charlie Brown'', in which he becomes invisible. However, that did not happen in the strip, so was not considered canonical by Schulz. In summer of 1990, when Charlie Brown meets Peggy Jean. She offers to hold the football, but Charlie Brown, being too scared she will do what Lucy does, refuses to kick it. She then gets upset and leaves camp for that. However, when she returns, she does not make him kick the football. Almost all Peanuts fans agree, the cruelest example of this trick is in the TV special, It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown, in which Lucy pulls the football away during an actual game. It is not the fact that Lucy pulls away the football, but that Charlie Brown is blamed for missing it when it is clearly not his fault. Many viewers wrote in protesting—while they could accept Lucy pulling the ball away, they could not accept Charlie Brown being senselessly blamed for something he clearly did not do. Schulz and the producers agreed, and some of the lines where Charlie Brown's teammates berate him have since been redubbed to make Lucy take the blame in subsequent rebroadcasts. In the DVD release, two lines where Peppermint Patty blames Charlie Brown are re-dubbed to what resembles backwards talk (at about 7½ minutes in, "Okay, Chuck, you really goofed up on that play!"; and at around 15½ minutes in, "Chuck, you can't do anything right!!"). In The Schulz Museum, there is one exhibit, of a mural composed of 3,588 Peanuts comic strips, that when they are all put together, form a picture of Lucy pulling away a football from Charlie Brown. In other media *In the cold opener for the Malcolm in the Middle season 4 episode "Grandma Sues", Malcolm finds out his brother Reese has never read Peanuts and then invites him outside to kick the football. *In an episode of Family Guy, Peter watches the gag and kicks Lucy, causing her to cry. *In Great Pumpkin Island, your Poptropican gives Charlie Brown a pen from Linus's Desk so he can sign the contract and then you watch the gag, including Lucy's line, "Funny thing about this contract, it was never noterizied." and afterwards your Poptropican takes the football. External links *[http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1951/11/14/ The football gag first appears in the Peanuts comic strip from November 14, 1951. Violet, not Lucy, holds the ball.] *Lucy first plays the prank on Charlie Brown in the strip from November 16, 1952. *Lucy asks Rerun to play the trick on Charlie Brown in the strip from October 24, 1999. Category:Recurring themes Category:Sports Category:Charlie Brown